As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
One type of information handling device is a server, which is a processor-based device on a network that manages network resources. As examples, a file server is dedicated to storing files, a print server manages one or more printers, a network server manages network traffic, and a database server processes database queries. A Web server services Internet World Wide Web pages.
In recent years, servers have been produced as “blade servers”, which are thin, modular electronic circuit boards, containing one or more microprocessors, memory, and other server hardware and firmware. Blade servers can be easily inserted into a space-saving rack with many other blade servers. Blade servers are sometimes referred to as a high-density servers. They are often used in clusters of servers dedicated to a single task.
Blade servers may employ management cards or management modules to provide remote management capability. Reliability may be improved by incorporating a “spare” or redundant management module. Management modules include firmware that may updated from time to time. In conventional blade servers with redundant management modules, firmware updates are prone to error because the user or administrator must remember to update both management modules by essentially performing the same firmware update produced two times in a row.